Q1 2018 Thoughts

Initially, I had started this post in January and titled it "Beginning of the Year Thoughts". As usual, life happened and I got distracted. I've come to this page a handful of times since and have struggled with how to begin. How do you begin when you've been away from your blog for a year? I know some of you keep up with me via Facebook and Instagram but there is something about truly writing about your thoughts and feelings.

2017 was a rough year that was mostly spent planning my wedding and on July 29, 2017, I got married!

Planning a wedding is a lot of work! But the wedding was everything that I had planned in my head and everyone had a wonderful time.

I even had a little bit of my dad with me since he couldn't walk me down the aisle. I had his hankerchief as part of my bridal bouquet.

 After the wedding, we honeymooned in Fiji, moved residences, my husband got a new job which involved commuting, my mother-in-law passed away at Thanksgiving and it was our first holidays without her. It felt like anything that could happen to put stress on us and our newly married life did. Life has truly been one crazy roller coaster.

We added one more stressor to our lives. I finally succumbed to the puppy fever I was living with for years and adopted a little french bulldog puppy we named Luna.

We immediately fell in love with her and within two weeks of bringing her home, she had a medical emergency. I rushed her to the emergency clinic on a Friday night and was told that she needed to have surgery. You can just imagine my worry and confusion. Luna recovered from surgery but she had a relapse a month later which we are monitoring. It appears that she may need a second surgery but only time will tell. For now, we monitor her with the help of pet sitters and you would never know she has any issues at all. She is a happy, playful puppy that everyone falls in love with!

Despite Luna's illness, she brings us a lot of joy and our goal is to get her to be fully healthy. It's interesting because I went to the breeder adamant that I wanted a boy puppy but the boy puppy was a shy, cowering little pup...and in bounds this girl puppy who just had such a fun and wonderful personality. I often think about what would have happened if we hadn't picked her and she had stayed at the breeders. I'm pretty sure that had this all happened, they would have put her down so I feel it's my mission to advocate for her and I hope she fully recovers.

Stitching has slowed down immensely since my nights mostly consist of either cleaning up after Luna, training Luna or having her fall asleep on my arm!

At the end of last year, I finished all the stitching in Anniversaries of the Heart with the exception of the personalizations and a few stitches in the second to last block. I need to get back to choosing and charting personalizations. Here is the final block without personalizations.

And how the whole piece looks right now.

This year, I signed up for the iStitch Red Band Sampler Stitch-a-Long and I just caught up yesterday! I love how the red silk looks on the ivory banding. The next part will be released tomorrow so my goal is to stitch that right away.

Once I've done that, I will decide between working on Anniversaries of the Heart or starting Shakespeare Peddler's Ragamuffin #2.

So I have a question for those of you who have stuck it out to the end of the post and have jumped on the Flosstube bandwagon. How do I get started? I think I would like to do some videos especially since I need to practice my public speaking. Why not start with my blog readers and stitching friends! Can someone point me in the right direction? Is there some sort of tutorial? I hope someone has some ideas.

I'll be back with an update soon.

Take care,
Valerie :)